RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)


  • ICE Demonstrates Why We Need the Second Amendment

    Source: Reason
    by JD Tuccille

    “This week, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes warned that her state’s Stand Your Ground law makes confrontations between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the public potentially dangerous. Mayes, a Democrat, thinks she’s scoring points against the self-defense law while raising a caution to ICE agents, but she’s really underlining a feature of America’s political culture. It’s not Stand Your Ground that puts masked government agents in peril, but this country’s noble history of resistance to overbearing government and the Second Amendment in which that tradition is embodied. … Mayes told 12 News’s Brahm Resnik ‘… we have a Stand Your Ground law that says if you reasonably believe that your life in in danger, and you’re in your house, or your car, or on your property, that you can defend yourself with lethal force.'” (01/23/26)

    https://reason.com/2026/01/23/ice-demonstrates-why-we-need-the-second-amendment/

  • Ayn Rand, Illegal Immigrant

    Source: Notablog
    by Chris Matthew Sciabarra

    “On February 19, 1926, Ayn Rand arrived in the United States from the Soviet Union on a six-month visa to visit her Chicago relatives. She had every intention of remaining in the US permanently. But she knew that US immigration law was highly restrictive. She told officials that she fully intended to return to Russia to marry a man to whom she was engaged. This was a lie. However, given the restrictive immigration laws of the time, Rand’s entrance into the US would have been refused had she not lied about an imminent return to her native country.” (01/23/26)

    https://notablog.net/2026/01/23/ayn-rand-illegal-immigrant/

  • Donald Trump’s Board of Piece (of the Action)

    Source: Garrison Center
    by Thomas L Knapp

    “We’ve already watched Trump knock down billions in new wealth as president, billing taxpayers for use of his own properties and tapping family and friends as proxies for everything from corporate takeovers to insider trading to cryptocurrency scams. Now he’s setting himself up as all-powerful chairman for life of an organization that will handle — and hand out contracts disposing of — untold additional billions in Gaza aid. Guess who will get those contracts? Oh, for the good old days of the Biden family’s mere ‘10% for the Big Guy.'” (01/24/26)

    https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20286

  • Nullify the Police State: The People’s Veto to Rein in a Lawless Government

    Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
    by John W Whitehead

    “We are living through a period of open lawlessness at the highest levels of government. Executive orders are issued to sidestep Congress. Federal law enforcement is deployed as a tool of retaliation. Protest is criminalized. Surveillance expands. Due process becomes optional. Courts are packed, ignored, or bypassed. Entire communities are terrorized under the guise of ‘law and order.’ None of this is accidental. And none of it is temporary. … A president is not a monarch, a CEO, or a landlord over the republic. He is an employee — hired by ‘we the people,’ bound by a written contract called the Constitution, and subject to limits he did not write and cannot rewrite. When that employee ignores his limits, only one check remains: the people themselves.” (01/23/26)

    https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/nullify-the-police-state-the-peoples-veto-to-rein-in-a-lawless-government/

  • Will Trump’s DHS “Zone Out” the First Amendment?

    Source: Libertarian Institute
    by Jim Bovard

    “Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday called for Minneapolis to ‘set up a peaceful protest zone so that these individuals can exercise their First Amendment rights and do so peacefully.’ Since 9/11, ‘free speech zones’ have been one of the biggest constitutional shams around. Both major political parties have used ‘free speech zone’ restrictions to seek to silence dissent.” (01/23/26)

    https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/will-trumps-dhs-zone-out-the-first-amendment

  • Rebuilding two-way trust, city by city

    Source: Christian Science Monitor
    by staff

    “A new poll finds 45% of American voters identify as independents, not aligned with either party that dominates politics. That is the highest rate on record for the United States. Voters in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe display a similar neutrality or disinterest. Political polarization, it appears, is contributing to citizens’ party disaffection and thus, potentially, to civic disengagement. The danger of a public that has ‘checked out’ of political interchange, observed American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Samuel Abrams, is that ‘citizens gradually learn the wrong lesson: that withdrawal is safer than participation.’ At the same time, cities around the world (from Mexico City to Montreal, from Boston to Bengaluru, India) are managing to cultivate a feeling of local belonging that fosters civic involvement and trust.” (01/23/25)

    https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0123/Rebuilding-two-way-trust-city-by-city

  • The Bourgeois Are (And Have Been) Building The Kingdom of Heaven

    Source: The Findings Substack
    by Paul Rosenberg

    “By the golden rule, humans are primary entities. By the iron rule, nearly all of them are demoted to the role of secondary or derivative entities. And this is made very clear by the fact that enforced hierarchies (states, large corporations and so on) require every occupant of their structure (save a very few at the pinnacle) to relinquish a good deal of their agency, their scope, their cognition, to the larger entity. It’s of great significance then, that humans of the bourgeois model are free agents, and not bound within an enforced hierarchy. These people are almost entirely free to operate via the golden rule, while people within hierarchies are forced to live by the iron rule for large portions of their lives.” (01/24/25)

    https://thefindings.substack.com/p/the-bourgeois-are-and-have-been-building

  • A Debate on the Transition, or Not, from Law and Politics to Legal Codes as Opportunities for Immoral AI

    Source: Isonomia Quarterly
    by Jason Morgan

    “What takes the place of politics, however dirty and corrupt it was, once politics has broken down? This is where my fears show their faces. If it is true that we already live in an age of superintelligent agents, and if those agents are growing more powerful by the day, and if, on a separate track, our politics is broken and getting broken-er and broken-er, then the convergence of the two trends, superintelligence and political dysfunction, seems almost inevitable. What happens next, to my mind, is unpredictable, except that it will surely not redound to the benefit of mankind.” (01/24/26)

    https://isonomiaquarterly.com/archive/volume-3-issue-4/a-debate-on-the-transition-or-not-from-law-and-politics-to-legal-codes-as-opportunities-for-immoral-ai/

  • The Magic System Of Zionism

    Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
    by Caitlin Johnstone

    “If I spoke critically of something abusive that India was doing in Kashmir, would you expect me to be accused of an anti-Hindu hate crime? If you criticized an Indian military operation, would you have to preface it with ‘I don’t hate Hindus or their religion and am not the slightest bit Hinduphobic?’ If there was worldwide opposition to something that Indian military forces were doing, would you expect western governments to start frantically churning out laws to ban that opposition because it was making members of the Hindu community feel unsafe? Would it ever in your wildest imaginings occur to you that a criticism of the violent actions of the government of India could in any way be interpreted as an attack on the Hindu faith and the membership of that religion? You can probably see where I’m going with this.” (01/24/25)

    https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/01/24/the-magic-system-of-zionism/

  • Illegal immigration was never an actual problem

    Source: Sex and the State
    by Cathy Reisenwitz

    “Who could have predicted that hiring thousands of agents with no background checks, giving them barely any training, sending them into communities where they’re not wanted, and making it extremely clear to them that they would never be held accountable for any violence they perpetrate would lead to them escalating from hurting people with no remorse to increasingly murdering folks, in cold blood, on camera? Indeed, who would have thought that allowing Jonathan Ross to murder Renee Good in broad daylight, on camera, with zero consequences, would have emboldened other ICE officers to murder more innocent people in broad daylight on camera? … I just think it bears repeating, at this time and always, that illegal immigration was never an actual problem. Illegal aliens commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, on average. They create more jobs and boost native-born wages, on average.” (01/24/26)

    https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/illegal-immigration-was-never-an

  • Making kids do remote schooling on “snow days” sucks; get off the screens & go touch snow

    Source: New York Post
    by Kirsten Fleming

    “The forecast is grim for New York City school kids. On Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that, no matter how many inches of the white stuff drop during Sunday’s looming storm, there will be no snow day to start the week. ‘I know to the disappointment of any student that’s watching this right now, Monday is either going to be a remote learning day or it’s going to be an in-person school day,’ Mamdani said on NY1. ‘It’s not going to be a traditional snow day. That is a determination we’ve made.’ Give these kids a damn break. Remote learning — a horrifically ineffective holdover from the Covid lockdown era — has essentially wiped out the glorious snow day, a rite of passage for so many American kids, including right here in the Northeast.” (01/23/25)

    https://nypost.com/2026/01/23/opinion/making-kids-do-remote-schooling-on-snow-days-sucks/

  • The West needs a reckoning with America’s decline

    Source: spiked
    by Phil Mullan

    “In The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, the Athenian historian and general, wrote: ‘What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear that this caused in Sparta.’ Thankfully, war is never inevitable, but historically, the circumstances Thucydides described have often proved dangerous. A great power that is past its prime, that senses its further decline, and targets the upcoming powers, creates a predicament that requires careful handling by all parties. But this is beyond the capacity of today’s Western rulers. … A key symptom of the West’s geopolitical fecklessness is that America’s relative decline – and its global implications – has not been properly grasped by most transatlantic governments.” (01/24/26)

    https://archive.is/XB0tP

  • The Gratuitous Barbarity of Trump’s So-Called “Board of Peace”

    Source: Common Dreams
    by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies

    “At the opening ceremony for Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Jared Kushner unveiled glossy images of his vision for a ‘new Gaza’: shining apartment towers, luxury developments, and sweeping views of the Mediterranean. There were no Palestinians at the ceremony — and none on the Board of Peace itself. In Kushner’s fantasy, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza. But how, exactly, are Palestinians to be ‘demilitarized’ and pacified to make way for this Riviera of the Middle East? The assassination of Gaza’s Khan Younis police chief in a drive-by shooting this January offers a chilling clue. It was not an isolated act of lawlessness, but an ominous signal of what lies ahead.” (01/23/25)

    https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-board-of-peace-2675008811

  • What the Grateful Dead Can Show a Fractured America

    Source: RealClearPolitics
    by J Peder Zane

    “As our great nation celebrates its 250th anniversary in a time of angry division, when we are wondering who we are as a people and what we stand for, the Grateful Dead’s legacy offers useful ways to think about such questions. Like the best ideas, they didn’t insist on answers but pushed us to consider possibilities. The band was quintessentially American because it gave equal play to the great forces of our society – rugged individualism and community – resolving the tension between ideas that our politics too often cast as conflicting. Or, as the group’s first-among-equals, Jerry Garcia, would have put it, every yin depends on a yang.” (01/23/26)

    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2026/01/23/what_the_grateful_dead_can_show_a_fractured_america__153746.html

  • Profit-Led Inflation: Trivial or Wrong?

    Source: Cato Institute
    by Ryan Bourne and Nathan Miller

    “In recent years, I’ve offered several critiques of inflation theories variously described as ‘greedflation,’ ‘sellers’ inflation’ or ‘profit-led inflation.’ The economist Christopher Conlon has now offered a more formal treatment in a forthcoming paper in the International Journal of Industrial Organization. He comes to the same conclusions.” (01/23/26)

    https://www.cato.org/commentary/profit-led-inflation-trivial-or-wrong

  • Inept Con Man in the White House

    Source: Free Association
    by Sheldon Richman

    “You hear that, MAGA? You got that, America Firsters? Your Dear Leader acknowledges that he has not been an America Firster at all, but a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump Firster. His goal wasn’t to Make America Great Again, but to make his White House or Mar-a-Lago mantelpiece great.” (01/23/26)

    https://sheldonfreeassociation.blogspot.com/2026/01/tgif-inept-con-man-in-white-house.html

  • TN: Snow, ICE, & Pesticides

    Source: The Pamphleteer
    by Megan Podsiedlik

    “Last year, a controversial pest control bill started making its way through the General Assembly. The legislation, which passed through the senate, would prevent civil ‘failure to warn’ liability lawsuits from being filed against pesticide manufacturers and sellers in Tennessee as long as they have an EPA-approved label. Toward the end of last session, the House Judiciary Committee voted to place the bill on 2026’s calendar. The legislation was on the committee’s agenda for this Wednesday, with rumors that a new amendment rewriting the bill would be introduced by Rep. Johnny Garrett (R-Goodlettsville). But when Wednesday rolled around, the bill was taken off notice, pausing its progress once again. The Lead Up Groups in favor of the GOP-sponsored legislation include the Tennessee Farm Bureau and the Modern Ag Alliance, which Bayer founded to protect, defend, and ensure continued farmer access to crop protection tools (specifically glyphosate) amidst mounting legal challenges.” (01/23/25)

    https://pamphleteer.co/newsletter/snow-ice-pesticides/

  • Academic freedom suffers blow after blow in Florida

    Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
    by Garrett Gravley

    “In 2023, FIRE raised the following question: What’s going on in Florida? In light of recent affronts to academic freedom in the Sunshine State, we regret to raise this question once again.” (01/23/26)

    https://www.thefire.org/news/academic-freedom-suffers-blow-after-blow-florida

  • A Small Tip Jar for the Administrative State

    Source: Bet On It
    by Ben Nadelstein

    “Modern governments send a clear signal to their workers: individual citizens do not matter very much. Feedback for government is often collective rather than personal, delayed rather than immediate, and symbolic rather than material. As a result, government bureaucrats rationally optimize for rule compliance and blame avoidance, not for responsiveness, goodwill, or basic courtesy. … Suppose taxpayers received a small share of their yearly taxed salary, say 1%, that they could allocate annually to adjust the compensation (up or down) of specific government employees, agency heads, or even departments as a whole.” (01/23/26)

    https://www.betonit.ai/p/a-small-tip-jar-for-the-administrative

  • Left’s teachable moment about perils of unlimited government

    Source: Orange County Register
    by Steven Greenhut

    “In freer nations, the leader’s powers are strictly limited and the citizens’ rights are protected. Yet in America today, we are dependent on every whim, utterance and narcissistic rage post from our president, as he pursues policies that could disrupt our lives. In that way, we’re more like North Korea than our founders’ America. This has always been true to a degree, but since Donald Trump took office last year, Americans have been experiencing a severe form of political whiplash. Firmly in control of the nation’s massive federal apparatus, MAGA and its Republican lickspittles in Congress have thrived on chaos. … Both political sides assume they will always control the levers of power. But they forget this important axiom: Don’t ever support a new power that you wouldn’t want in the hands of your worst enemy.” (01/23/26)

    https://archive.is/RrBPk

  • The Big Winner: China

    Source: The American Prospect
    by Robert Kuttner

    “Trump’s bizarre threats to take Greenland by military force, now rescinded, added one more signal to America’s usual allies that the U.S. could no longer be trusted. One ironic result is closer economic relations between the rest of the world and China. This is far more consequential than whatever deterrent effect on China that might be achieved by more U.S. bases in Greenland. Europe, especially Germany, was already moving in the direction of closer economic ties with China. In the wake of the Greenland debacle, there will be more trade deals and more investment, both by Europe in China and by China in Europe, increasing Europe’s dependence on Beijing.” (01/23/25)

    https://prospect.org/2026/01/23/big-winner-china-trump-carney-greenland/

  • Why Trump Should Accept Putin’s New START Offer

    Source: Foreign Policy
    by Ariel Petrovics

    “The United States is approaching a decisive moment in its management of nuclear risk. New START — the last remaining arms control agreement between the United States and Russia — is scheduled to expire on Feb. 5. Signed in 2010, New START has helped limit nuclear competition between the world’s largest arsenals by capping warheads and delivery systems and enabling inspections and data exchanges. Although Russia suspended inspections and halted treaty-mandated data exchanges in 2023, protesting U.S. and NATO support for Ukraine, it promised to maintain treaty limits and has since offered to extend those limits by one year if the United States agrees to do the same.” (01/23/26)

    https://archive.is/ibrZB

  • The American Police State Has Arrived

    Source: Antiwar.com
    by Andrew P Napolitano

    “In recent days, the government in America has not only failed to protect the freedom of speech, it has attacked it. Like authoritarians throughout history, it has sought to silence the speech it hates and fears. But most authoritarians did not have a Constitution that was written as an intentional obstacle to them.” (01/23/26)

    https://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2026/01/22/the-american-police-state-has-arrived

  • Davos fracas hints at how Europe could fight economic warfare too

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by Karthik Sankaran

    “It has been an extraordinary few days for Washington’s economic and security relations with the world. On January 17, President Trump threatened 10-25% tariffs on 8 European countries if they did not agree to the U.S. executing a ‘complete and total purchase’ of Greenland. This then led to a furious response that united most of Europe, and a subsequent ‘framework for an agreement’ negotiated at Davos that seemed to reflect deescalation on all sides. But even if this particular storm may have passed with some kind of fudge that offers less than what Trump demanded, the episode raises a fresh round of questions about the increasingly tangled (and contradictory) economic, financial, and security connections between the U.S. and its allies, particularly those in the North Atlantic.” (01/24/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/davos-europe-trump/

  • Here’s How The Media Are Lying Right Now: ICE And the “5-Year-Old Boy” Edition

    Source: The Federalist
    by Eddie Scarry

    “Credit to the Department of Homeland Security and Vice President J.D. Vance for immediately nipping in the bud what was sure to be a hysterical weekend-long news cycle. And yet, the headlines remain: New York Times: ‘Detention of 5-Year-Old by Federal Agents Incenses Minneapolis’ … Washington Post: ‘ICE detains four children from Minnesota school district, including 5-year-old’ … CBS: ‘ICE takes 5-year-old boy and his father after using boy as ‘bait,’ school district says’ … Axios: ‘ICE’s detention of child puts new focus on Trump team’s tactics’ … They would have you believe that ICE snatched an adorable little boy out of preschool and marched him into the frigid air of a Minneapolis suburb.” (01/23/25)

    https://thefederalist.com/2026/01/23/heres-how-the-media-are-lying-right-now-ice-and-5-year-old-boy-edition/

  • Hey, Dummy

    Source: The Dispatch
    by Kevin D Williamson

    “Hank Jr. began his career performing his father’s songs and songs in his father’s style — he was something very close to what we would today call a ‘tribute’ act, his life dominated by the memory of a man he barely knew and could never live up to. (The family traditions must have aged him: He released ‘All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down,’ lamenting middle-aged decline, at 32.) And even after Hank Jr. went off to explore new musical directions, he continued to be ‘Bocephus,’ the little wooden man mouthing someone else’s words and dominated by forces beyond his control. The outline of the story is familiar enough, and one might wonder whether J.D. Vance, another obviously troubled son of an absent father, is entirely comfortable with Donald Trump’s hand up his backside working his mouth. It is fortunate for Vance that Trump has such famously diminutive fists.” (01/23/26)

    https://archive.is/hM4X6

  • The Latest Trump Administration Grift: Tariff Checks

    Source: The Daily Economy
    by Paul Mueller

    “Trump’s tariffs haven’t boosted manufacturing; they’ve raised costs and disrupted supply chains. A redistributive dividend check can’t reverse the underlying economic harm.” (01/23/26)

    https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-latest-trump-administration-grift-tariff-checks/

  • The Hawks’ New Plans for Iran Are Disastrous

    Source: The American Conservative
    by Ali Rizk

    “As President Donald Trump has shown reluctance to engage in a risky large-scale bombing campaign against Iran, hawkish voices are advocating for alternative courses of action in an apparent bid to keep Washington on a confrontational footing with Tehran. The proposals being put forward appear clearly designed to present Trump with what may look like risk-averse strategies but in fact are not. Two alternative courses of action in particular have emerged: the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the partitioning of Iran along ethnic lines. Both these options could have dramatic negative repercussions that would far outweigh any supposed benefits.” (01/23/26)

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-hawks-new-plans-for-iran-are-disastrous/

  • “ICE Is Made Up of a Bunch of Cowards”

    Source: In These Times
    Margaret Vail Palmquist

    “he Minnesota shutdown is well underway, kicked off with a large picket line by workers and an act of civil disobedience Friday morning by faith leaders outside of the Minneapolis/Saint Paul International Airport, where many protesters are decrying the abduction of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos. The preschooler, according to school officials, was used as ​’bait’ when he arrived home from school in Columbia Heights on Tuesday, January 20. They say that agents led him to his door and instructed him to knock so that they could assess if anyone else was home.” [editor’s note: OR, as ICE alleges, the father ran and the agents took the child to warmer places so he did not freeze – SAT] [additional editor’s note: If you’ll believe the ICE gang, you’ll believe anyone and anything – TLK] (01/25/25)

    https://inthesetimes.com/article/ice-is-made-up-of-a-bunch-of-cowards

  • The Deportation Labor Shock

    Source: EconLog
    by Tarnell Brown

    “Mass deportation is often framed as a pro‑worker policy. Remove unauthorized immigrants, the argument goes, and native wages will rise as labor supply contracts. This logic is intuitive, politically potent, and economically incomplete. Mass deportation is a massive market intervention. When examined through the lens of labor markets, production complementarities, and historical evidence, mass deportation emerges not as a wage‑enhancing reform but as a broad negative shock — one that reduces output, raises prices, and ultimately leaves most American workers worse off.” (01/23/26)

    https://www.econlib.org/econlog/the-deportation-labor-shock